IoT-Based Cold Chain Monitoring System for Minimizing Post-Harvest Losses in Perishable Food Commodities

Abstract

The problem of post-harvest losses in perishable food commodities continues to be a significant issue to world food security, economic viability, and nutritional quality. Poor storage facilities, temperature variations and poor transportation infrastructure make major contributions to spoiling of fruits, vegetables, milk products, meat and seafood during the supply chain operations. Cold chain management is thus a necessity to maintain the freshness of the product, nutritional values and food wastage. In the proposed study, the authors offer a cold chain monitoring system built with IoT that can reduce post-harvest losses by reducing environmental disruptions through real-time environmental surveillance and smart data analytics. The temperature, humidity, and gas sensors are proposed to be combined with the microcontroller-based monitoring units, wireless communication technologies, cloud storage, and remote monitoring dashboards to be integrated into the proposed system. The system will constantly gather environmental information during storage and transportation and send the information to a centralized cloud server to be analyzed instantly and raise an alarm. Experimental testing indicated better monitoring accuracy, quicker reaction to abnormal environmental conditions and better operational efficiency as compared to the traditional methods of monitoring. The suggested system also noted some great success in terms of cutdowns on the rate of spoilage and enhanced preservation of perishable commodities during the supply chain process. The paper identifies the possibilities of the technologies, which are involved in IoT-enabled cold chains, to improve the quality of food, to reinforce the system of food logistics, and to promote global food security programs.